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zondag 28 oktober 2012

G4 is cancelling "Attack of the Show!" and "X-Play," two giddily nerdy shows that helped define the network.

Both shows will end production at the end of the year after 1,700 episodes of "Attack of the Show" and 1,300 episodes of "X-Play."

"Attack of the Show!," perhaps best known for launching the career of former host Olivia Munn, has focused since its 2005 debut on technology, games, pop culture, movies and videos. Candace Bailey and Sara Underwood now host.

The gaming-obsessed "X-Play" debuted in 2003 on G4's previous incarnation, TechTV. It is now hosted by Morgan Webb and Blair Herter.

G4 said several guest co-hosts -- including John Barrowman, Michael Ian Black, Josh Myers, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel and Horatio Sanz -- would appear in the last two months of episodes for both shows.

"'Attack of the Show!' and "X-Play" have been important for G4, and we want to acknowledge the creative people who have helped inspire and showcase the phenomenon of gamer culture,” G4 Media general manager Adam Stotsky said. “With more than 3,000 episodes aired between them, we have more than enough great material to honor these innovators and their amazing contributions as we bring both shows to a close.”

Sorvino will star in "Trooper," a procedural drama executive-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The project, which had earlier received a pilot order from CBS but did not go forward, follows a recently divorced female state trooper. The mother of three takes an unconventional approach to her work, but is paired with a by-the-books partner.

Romijn, meanwhile, will star in "King and Maxwell" as Michelle Maxwell, a former secret service agent, who takes on politically sensitive cases in Washington, DC. With her striking beauty, athletic prowess and her Beltway connections, Maxwell is a formidable investigator, determined to prove herself after being forced to resign from the secret service.

Jon Tenney ("The Closer") will play Maxwell's partner, Sean King.

Adapted from characters created by author David Baldacci, "King and Maxwell" is being being produced for TNT by CBS Television Studios and Shane Brennan Productions, with Shane Brennan (of "NCIS," "NCIS: LA") as executive producer and Karen Spiegel ("Absolute Power") and Grant Anderson ("Third Watch") as producers.

Baldacci serves as a consultant on the project.

A third pilot ordered by TNT, "Legends," will star Brendan Fraser as undercover operative Martin Odum, who has a chameleon-like ability to transform himself into a different person for each mission.

The New York Television Festival, which brings together independent TV producers with networks and studios, announced its winners Saturday.

The networks, studios and other companies participating in the festival are handing out 26 development deals this year. They include seven deals handed out through the festival's Pitch Partners competition, five from Lifetime, and additional deals with Fox, Samsung, A&E, IFC, MTV, VH1 and SyFy.

Six development deals were previously announced.

Here are the winners announced Saturday.

Pitch Partner awards:

- Sundance Channel: “I Want A New Life"” created by Stephen Soroka and Will Bozarth (New York, NY)

Gillian Anderson has denied recent reports that she and X-Files co-star David Duchovny had recently begun dating.

Gossip site Celebrity Dirty Laundry claimed in the summer that the pair had been in a "serious relationship" for some time, after Anderson split from partner Mark Griffiths.

Duchovny's representative denied the rumours at the time, but Anderson confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that the pair were never romantically involved.

The 44-year-old said: "No, there wasn't any truth in that. I was enjoying the ludicracy [sic] of it for a while, but then he started denying it publicly and so I lost all my enjoyment of it."

When told that she had potentially broken the hearts of X-Files fans who had always hoped for their characters Mulder and Scully to get together, she replied "I know", then joked: "I emailed him at one point and said: 'You left the toilet seat up again'."

Anderson can be seen in the film Sister, released in UK cinemas this week, and her voice will also be heard in the English dub of Studio Ghibli animation From Up on Poppy Hill.

Howie Mandel's latest entry into the game-show genre will premiere Dec. 10 on NBC, the network said Friday.

"Take it All" (formerly titled "Howie Mandel's White Elephant") will air Dec. 10-14 at 9 p.m. ET, wrapping up its run with back-to-back episodes on Dec. 17, starting at 9 p.m.

The show will feature a contestant selecting and opening a high-end prize, with the next player having to decide if they will steal the prize or take a chance with a second, unopened prize, which could be worth more than the first prize. When the contestants have been narrowed down to two players, they will be forced to decide if they want to keep what they've won, or take all of the prizes.

In what basically amounts to a high-stakes game of rock-paper-scissors, if one player chooses to keep their prizes and the other chooses to take all of the prizes, the "take it all" player goes home with all of the prizes. However, if they both choose to take all of the prizes, they both go home empty-handed.

The airing of "Take it All" means that "The Voice" will run a one-hour episode rather than a two-hour episode at 8 p.m. on Dec. 10 and Dec. 17.

"Take It All" comes via Universal Television and Alevy Productions, with Mandel, Scott St. John and Mike Marks as the executive producers.

Armando Iannucci has confirmed that the current run of The Thick of It will "definitely" be the last.

The show has run for four series with a pair of specials between the second and third, and the final episode of the current run will air this weekend.

Iannucci told The Guardian: "It's definitely the last series. I've known from past experience to never say never.

"I don't think it's going to change politics. In terms of comedy hopefully it will inspire someone in the same way that I remember listening to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or watching Not the Nine O'Clock News and thinking, 'I want to do something like that'."

The three-part series, entitled Life of Crime and scripted by Waking the Dead scribe Declan Croghan, will span three decades of a police officer's career.

Atwell will take the lead role of rookie policewoman Denise Woods, who becomes obsessed with one particular case involving the murder of a teenage girl.

Beginning with the Brixton riots in 1985, the three instalments will follow Denise's professional development through the police force, her single-minded and frequently reckless pursuit of justice, and her struggle to be accepted in a male-dominated environment.

The second and third episodes will be set in 1997 and 2013 respectively.

Life of Crime will begin shooting in Brixton and Dublin from November.

Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts extended his condolences Friday to the family of a CNBC executive whose two children, police say, were murdered by their nanny in Manhattan.

"I just want to say on behalf of all of us at CNBC and Comcast and NBCUniversal and many others around the nation how touched and sad we are by this unspeakable act, and that we'll do everything we can to support the family in their awful time," Roberts (pictured) said at the end of Comcast's earnings call Friday. "We'll go back to our jobs but have them in our thoughts and prayers."

Two of Kevin Krim's children, ages 2 and 6, were stabbed to death Thursday. Their mother, Marina, discovered them in a bathtub, and their nanny was found unconscious with stab wounds police believe were self-inflicted. No charges have been filed yet against the nanny, 50-year-old Yoselyn Ortega.

Krim, CNBC’s digital general manager, was reportedly on a business trip to San Francisco at the time of the killings and returned home to be with his wife and their other child.

Comcast and NBCU also released a statement Friday.

"A member of the CNBC family has suffered an unimaginable loss," it said. "The sadness that we all feel for Kevin, Marina and their family is without measure. Our thoughts, prayers and unwavering support are with them all."

Comcast Corp. posted a higher quarterly profit on Friday thanks in large part to increased revenues from NBCUniversal's Olympics coverage.

Comcast's third-quarter net income was $2.1 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $908 million, or 33 cents a share a year earlier.

Revenue for NBCUniversal increased 31.2 percent to $6.8 billion in the third quarter of 2012 compared to $5.2 billion in the third quarter of 2011, primarily driven by 2012 London Olympics revenue of $1.2 billion in the Broadcast Television segment. Excluding the Olympics, NBCUniversal revenue increased 8.3 percent.

"Steve Burke and his team are making steady progress thorughout all of NBCUniversal," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said of the NBCU CEO.

Roberts said NBC's ratings are up 17 percent over last season and up 31 percent in entertainment. It is the first time it has led the broadcast networks in the ratings in the first four weeks of the season since 2002. NBC spent years in fourth place.

"It's certainy early but I believe and hope we are seeing the beginning of a turnaround at NBC," Roberts said.

Comcast also lost fewer video customers and gained more online customers than analysts expected.

Excluding gains from sales of spectrum and a stake in A&E Networks, earnings came to 46 cents a share -- up 39 percent. That matched analysts' average estimate, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The games drew a record audience that averaged 31.1 million viewers per night, 12 percent more than the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Strong Olympics ratings mean Comcast will at least break even on its $1.18 billion deal for Olympics broadcast rights, while analysts had initially expected it to lose money from the agreement.

Comcast took a 51 percent controlling stake in NBC Universal in January 2011. It holds the U.S. broadcast rights for the next four Olympic contests.

The cable unit, which includes video and Internet, earned $9.98 billion in revenues, up 6.9 percent. The company lost 117,000 video customers, which beat StreetAccount estimates of a loss of 133,000. Its 287,000 new Internet customers also beat expectations.

The "Dancing With the Stars" alum, podcast star and perennial loudmouth has signed up with Fox News as a contributor, a spokesperson for Fox told TheWrap. Carolla will appear primarily on "The O'Reilly Factor," but will also contribute to other Fox News shows.

Carolla, who has occasionally appeared on Fox in the past, will make his first appearance as a contributor on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Monday.

Though Carolla's political ideology isn't completely rigid he does tend to lean conservative on certain topics.

"I don't really have one group where I can subscribe to all of their dogma wholeheartedly," Carolla has said. "I guess I would be Republican, in the sense that I want a secure border, I'm not into the welfare state, I'm not into all those freebie lunch programs. It just kind of demeans people. On the other hand, I'd like pot to be legalized and I'm against semi-automatic and automatic weapons."

The 'Tea and Toast' singer fell ill earlier this week and show bosses made the decision today (October 26) not to include her in the performance lineup.

"NEWS: @lspraggan is just too unwell to perform on tonight's #xfactor," tweeted the official X Factor account, before adding: "Lucy will proceed to next weekend's show as happened with @diana_music [past contestant Diana Vickers]."

Vickers was issued a bye during the fifth week of the 2008 series after suffering with laryngitis. As a result, she was not subjected to the public vote and automatically progressed to the sixth round of the competition.

Spraggan, who is reportedly suffering from "severe flu", was last seen in public on Wednesday night (October 24), when she attended fellow contestant Rylan Clark's Halloween-themed birthday party dressed as a pumpkin.

The 21-year-old from Sheffield has not updated her own Twitter account since before the celebrations. Clark - who along with Spraggan is currently staying in a nearby hotel after being kicked out of the official contestants' lodgings following drunken behaviour - took to his account earlier today and posted an update that read: "F**k I'm ill."

No announcement has yet been made about whether Clark will compete in this evening's live show.

If the whole acting thing doesn't work out for Alan Cumming, it looks like he has a steady backup gig as the host of the Britannia Awards.

"X2" star Cumming will once again host the awards ceremony this year, the British Academy of Television Arts (BAFTA) Los Angeles said Thursday. This will mark the fourth time that Cumming will preside over the ceremony, described by BAFTA Los Angeles as the organization's "highest accolade, a celebration of achievements honoring individuals and companies that have dedicated their careers to advancing the entertainment arts."

"I'm so happy to be back hosting my fourth Britannia Awards,” the Scottish actor said. “It's 15 years since I first came to Hollywood and what better way to commemorate that than to be hosting a celebration of the best of British and Tinseltown. I'm excited to see old friends and raise a few glasses to the best in our business – and be a bit mischievous too of course.”

BAFTA Los Angeles also said that Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and Josh Gad will be among this year's presenters.

The 2012 Britannia Awards will take place Nov. 7 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and will air on BBC America on Nov. 11.